Benghazi Read Online Free

’90s.
    Other PMCs were working for various intelligence agencies.

    Private Military Contractors in Libya. Courtesy of SOFREP.
    Among the PMCs in Libya at this time were SECOPEX of France, led by Pierre Marziali; Blue Mountain Group of the UK; Canada’s Garda Security Group; Control Risks Group, HIS, and the Olive Group, also out of the UK; AKE, run by former SAS operator Andew Kain; and Galice Security out of France, led by former GIGN commando Federic Gallois. MVM, a company that had a large number of CIA contracts at the time, also had people on the ground in the aftermath of the civil war. Rumor has it that they may have been hunting down and destroying Gaddafi’s weapons stockpiles. The possible involvement of other American PMCs with known agency links—such as Xe (Select), Triple Canopy, and SOCMG—is something that needs further investigation.
    (One curious event involving a Private Military Company in Libya happened when the CEO of SECOPEX was executed in Benghazi. Something that often escapes the public and the media alike is that PMCs are often used as proxy forces by their home countries, giving policy makers at home a certain amount of protection from their electorate when things go wrong. Keeping with the theme of “no boots on the ground,” France allegedly dispatched SECOPEX into Libya to serve their interests. In May of 2011, The New York Times reported on vague information coming out of Libya about the company’s co-founder Pierre Marziali. The initial reports sounded strange because the CEO had been killed at a rebel checkpoint, but the other SECOPEX employees in the vehicle had been left unharmed. SOFREP sources report that the CEO was removed from his vehicle, taken aside, and killed. The other French contractors were then sent on their way. It seems that someone saw Pierre as an obstacle.)
    Since the rebels announced soon after the war began that they would be opening a central bank and were ready to begin oil exports, it seems likely that various intelligence services that wanted to see Gaddafi thrown out of power may have used PMCs to avoid putting soldiers on the ground. They may even have given money to the rebels under the table, with which to pay their own PMCs.
    The South African press has reported that white South African mercenaries were recruited by an oil corporation employee named Sarah Penfold to save the Gaddafi family. These mercenaries provided close protection for Gaddafi and also evacuated his sister to Algeria. Some speculation holds that these South Africans were recruited to be double agents. First they would build trust with Gaddafi by getting his sister out of the country, but later they would turn on him. What the truth is behind these rumors we may never know.
    We do know that the South Africans were protecting Gaddafi when his convoy came under air attack from NATO aircraft. After the bombing, a large group of rebels attacked the convoy. The South Africans cut their losses and ran while the rebels moved in and killed Gaddafi. At least one South African mercenary died in the process.
    SOFREP corresponded with former SAS Officer Simon Mann in the days after Gaddafi’s execution. Mann, the architect behind the failed 2004 “Wonga Coup” in Equatorial Guinea, confirmed that he knew several of the South African mercenaries protecting Gaddafi.
    The story gets stranger still. A video showing Gaddafi’s body being dragged and sodomized with a bayonet has voices in the background, voices speaking Spanish with a Colombian accent. Could this misplaced Colombian have been working for the UAE’s Reflexive Responses? Set up by Erik Prince—of Blackwater fame—Reflexive Responses was established at the request of one of the UAE’s princes. With a core nucleus consisting of Kiwi SAS veterans and South Africans that functions as a counter-terrorist force, the main body of this Private Military Company is known to consist of